Longtime readers of this blog know I'm not a big fan of infernal buzzing machines. So I was not too thrilled recently when I was enjoying the snowy outdoors, only to have the silence shattered by snowmobiles. (This was not in Virginia, mind you -- it's been eerily warm here.) I'm convinced there is a special circle in hell filled with nothing but snowmobiles and leaf blowers.

In this case, the snowmobile area was right next to a trail where many people engage in the old-fashioned practice of self-locomotion. My being on that trail did not impose on the snowmobilers, but their snowmobiling certainly affected my enjoyment. Which reminded me of a cartoon idea I've had for a while, the notion that "freedom" does not exist in a vacuum; that there is often a "freedom from" that is the flip side of the "freedom to." In an age when the word is so abused, it's important to remember this.

While the cartoon paints "freedom from" in a positive light, I don't feel that is always necessarily the case. Our freedom to speak outweighs the freedom from speech we don't like. It just seems to me that we tend to talk about "freedom to" more than "freedom from"; the cartoon is a reminder that everything we do has an impact.